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On May 23-24, following the Days of the International Academy of Education held earlier this week, the General Assembly of the International Academy of Education took place at HSE University Moscow. The assembly brings together education researchers and experts from all over the world, and this is the first time that the biannual meeting was held in Russia. Over the course of two days, members discussed joint projects and publications and met newly inducted members who had the opportunity to introduce themselves and present their research. Members also took part in small group discussions on a variety of topics, including digital literacy and math education.

The results of recent study conducted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the agency’s automatic interplanetary station, show the existence of a ‘permafrost’ near the poles of the Moon with a relatively high content of water ice (up to 5% by weight). It is believed that water ice could supply a life support system for the future Russian Lunar Station and that it could also produce hydrogen-oxygen fuel for flights into deep space.

The HSE Centre for Studies of Income and Living Standards studied the dynamics of the middle class and its behaviour with regard to paid services. The study was based on data drawn from the HSE Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE) for the years 2000 to 2017, and the results were presented at the 20th April International Academic Conference hosted by HSE.

Article

The article focuses on the concept of external shock and traces its evolution in different policy studies frameworks. Theoretical review of the first studies that look at dramatic events as a trigger to start reforms, advocacy coalitions framework and multiple streams framework both placing such events as a variable into their respective explanatory models, clearly shows the existence of an entire vocabulary of related but not synonymous concepts. This, in turn, leads to a terminological and conceptual confusion when one uses these notions in their research. Taking into account the revealed problem we conclude the review by bringing forward our own definition and its operationalization for handy use in empirical studies of reform processes.

This article discusses the process of reforming the executive authority in the Russian Federation in the period from 1990s to 2000s paying the attention to advocacy coalitions participation. Authors are wondering what could be done to make the reform of the state apparatus real, not imitation? Based on interviews and secondary data, the authors consistently consider administrative reform steps, focusing on the initiators’ of change objectives and the presence or absence of advocacy coalitions. As a result of this analysis, it is concluded that the reformers gradually came from non-public work on the reform to the realization that it is necessary to expand the composition of the actors involved in the process and to include representatives of civil society and the expert community. However, for various reasons, the full inclusion of NGOs, experts and the media in the process did not occur that had a negative effect on the results of reform.

By studying the process of reform of the Schengen acquis in 2011-2013 inspired by the Arab Spring andthe inflow of migrants to the Mediterranean shores of the European Union, this paper seeks todemonstrate how policy entrepreneurs exploit windows of opportunity that open following an externalshock (a notion is used to conceptualize the events of the Arab Spring) in order to fulfill their ownpreferences, regardless of the substance of the external shock in question. How could it happen that thereform initiated by Italy and France in 2011 to “re-nationalise the Schengen” would in the end turn outto be just the opposite of what they sought to achieve? The article suggests that the major factor whichhelps explain this is the institutional position of the European Commission which holds exclusive rightof legislative initiative, and the fact that by using its position, the Commission was able to win over theEuropean Parliament to its side by effectively making it a veto-player in negotiations with the EUCouncil, thus trapping the Member States into the “joint decision trap”. The research traces the reformprocess through all of its stages: starting with the agenda-setting by the Italian authorities who appliedalarmist rhetoric trying to securitize the migrants arriving to the Italian shores, proceeding with thechoice between alternative solutions proposed by different actors and policy reform initiation,multilateral negotiations between the EU Member States and the European Parliament and, concludingwith the adoption of the two legislative acts. The concluding remarks put the case into the broader

What determines outcomes of policy reforms and what influences scope of the changes brought by reform process? Scholars in political science believe crises and disasters to be one of the factors that may condition reform outcomes as policy entrepreneurs would often take stock of those crises to launch reforms and push for their preferred solutions. The case study of extradition policy reform in the EU carried out in the article reveals how group of entrepreneurs had been able to instrumentally use the 9/11 to make EU member states adopt the Framework decision on the European Arrest Warrant that completely eliminated extradition procedure within the EU. The argument put forth is twofold. First, entrepreneurs manipulate the reform process to palm off solutions that often have nothing to do with problems revealed by crises. Second, the entrepreneurs’ actions can make other actors agree to the outcomes that initially seemed unacceptable to them.

The article deals with the processes of building the information society and security in the CIS in accordance with modern conditions. The main objective is to review existing mechanisms for the formation of a common information space in the Eurasian region, regarded as one of the essential aspects of international integration. The theoretical significance of the work is to determine the main controls of the regional information infrastructure, improved by the development of communication features in a rapid process.The practical component consists in determining the future policies of the region under consideration in building the information society. The study authors used historical-descriptive approach and factual analysis of events having to do with drawing the contours of today's global information society in the regional refraction.

The main result is the fact that the development of information and communication technologies, and network resources leads to increased threats of destabilization of the socio-political situation in view of the emergence of multiple centers that generate the ideological and psychological background. Keeping focused information policy can not be conceived without the collective participation of States in the first place, members of the group leaders of integration - Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Currently, only produced a comprehensive approach to security in the information field in the Eurasian region, but the events in the world, largely thanks to modern technology, make the search for an exit strategy with a much higher speed.
The article contributes to the science of international relations, engaging in interdisciplinary thinking that is associated with a transition period in the development of society. A study of current conditions in their relation to the current socio-political patterns of the authors leads to conclusions about the need for cooperation with the network centers of power in the modern information environment, the formation of alternative models of networking, especially in innovation and scientific and technical areas of information policy, and expanding the integration of the field in this region on the information content.

The emergence of the Tea Party movement in recent years has shown that under the surface of mainstream political life in the USA there exists a different layer of ideas, which cannot be satisfactorily described in terms of the Republican/Democrat dichotomy. These ideas have their origins in the foundation of the American Republic, which owes a lot to ancient and mediaeval political theory. In the twentieth century there was a revival of these ideas in the form of the so-called “paleoconservative” movements which rediscovered their ancient and mediaeval heritage. This paper focuses on one of them, the Southern Agrarian movement, as exemplary of this radical intellectual project.

Gerrymandering – the artful and partisan manipulation of electoral districts – is a well known pathology of electoral systems, especially majoritarian ones. In this paper, we try to give theoretical and experimental answers to the following questions: 1) How much biased can the assignment of seats be under the effect of gerrymandering? 2) How effective is compactness as a remedy against gerrymandering? Accordingly, the paper is divided into two parts. In the first one, a highly stylized combinatorial model of gerrymandering is studied; in the second one, a more realistic multiobjective graph-partitioning model is adopted and local search techniques are exploited in order to find satisfactory district designs. In a nutshell, our results for the theoretical model mean that gerrymandering is as bad as one can think of and that compactness is as good as one can think of. These conclusions are confirmed to a large extent by the experimental results obtained with the latter model on some medium-large real-life test problems.

The article is devoted to the study of the authoritarianism prevalent in the mass consciousness of Russians. The article describes a new approach to the consideration of the authoritarian syndrome as the effects of the cultural trauma as a result of political and socio-cultural transformation of society. The article shows the dynamics of the symptoms of the authoritarianism, which appear in the mass consciousness of Russians from 1993 to 2011. This paper proposes a package of measures aimed at reducing the level of the authoritarianism in Russian society.

This paper studies the background and guidelines of discussions about the concept of sovereignty
and its limits. The paper begins with a short historical analysis of the processes that took place in
Soviet Russia that led to the “parade of sovereignties” in the early 1990s. Afterwards, the author
sketches the different approaches and doctrines upheld by the Constitutional Court of Russia in
several decisions concerning sovereignty problems. The paper focuses on the vertical dimension
of sovereignty, i.e. on different conceptions adopted by the federal and regional powers in postSoviet Russia regarding the legal status of the member-republics of the Russian Federation. The
development of the doctrine of the Constitutional Court of Russia in this matter is quite
illustrative as to the legal arguments used to protect the integrity of the Russian Federation
against the diverse disintegrative strategies pursued by the regions.

This work looks at a model of spatial election competition with two candidates who can spend effort in order to increase their popularity through advertisement. It is shown that under certain condition the political programs of the candidates will be different. The work derives the comparative statics of equilibrium policy platform and campaign spending with respect the distribution of voter policy preferences and the proportionality of the electoral system. In particular, it is whown that the equilibrium does not exist if the policy preferences are distributed over too narrow an interval.

This is the collection of articles devoted to the research of the Armenian Republic in different aspects. These reports were presented on the conference “The Republic of Armenia 2010: Previous Experiences – Future Prospects” in 2010 in Tehran.

The article examines "regulatory requirements" as a subject of state control over business in Russia. The author deliberately does not use the term "the rule of law". The article states that a set of requirements for business is wider than the legislative regulation.

First, the article analyzes the regulatory nature of the requirements, especially in the technical field. The requirements are considered in relation to the rule of law. The article explores approaches to the definition of regulatory requirements in Russian legal science. The author analyzes legislation definitions for a set of requirements for business.
The author concludes that regulatory requirements are not always identical to the rule of law. Regulatory requirements are a set of obligatory requirements for entrepreneurs’ economic activity. Validation failure leads to negative consequences.

Second, the article analyzes the problems of the regulatory requirements in practice. Lack of information about the requirements, their irrelevance and inconsistency are problems of the regulatory requirements in Russia.

Many requirements regulating economic activity are not compatible with the current development level of science and technology. The problems are analyzed on the basis of the Russian judicial practice and annual monitoring reports by Higher School of Economics.

Finally, the author provides an approach to the possible solution of the regulatory requirements’ problem. The author proposes to create a nationwide Internet portal about regulatory requirements. The portal should contain full information about all regulatory requirements. The author recommends extending moratorium on the use of the requirements adopted by the bodies and organizations of the former USSR government.

Nechiporuk D., Belokurova E., Nozhenko M. Working Papers of Centre for German and European Studies. Centre for German and European Studies, 2011. No. 10.

The paper describes some results of the international project “Improving Societal Conditions for the Baltic Sea Protection” (PROBALT) conducted by the international team of scholars from Finland, Germany and Russia in 2009-2011 in the framework of the broader BONUS+ programme. The project rested on the assumptions that the relatively unsuccessful actions aimed to protect the Baltic Sea cannot be explained only by lack of scientific knowledge of the existing ecological problems. Here, an important role is played by the sociocultural factors that influence the course of environmental policy at different levels: supranational, national and subnational. Special attention was drawn to the problem of eutrophication or enrichment of water bodies with the so called biogenic substances (phosphates, nitrogen, etc), which leads to massive algae bloom and lack of oxygen for marine organisms. Therefore, the principal aim of the research was to define the societal conditions for the protection of the Baltic Sea in the cases of the EU and some coastal countries like Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia. But in this Working Paper only the results of the research on the Russian case are presented.